Donald Trump is in China this week in a critical series of meetings with Chinese President Xi Jinping to discuss commercial and security issues.
Trump has vowed to bring up the case of Hong Kong's most famous political prisoner. Jimmy Lai was arrested in 2020 and charged under the new national security law with "colluding with foreign powers" and sedition. He has languished in a Chinese prison since then, and last year, he was convicted of those charges and sentenced to 20 years in prison.
According to his family, the 78-year-old Lai is already suffering from his forced confinement. In an article published in The Free Press, Lai's children, Sebastian and Claire, describe their father's condition.
"As family members, we are granted only 24 hours of visitation a year—which comes out to less than 30 minutes each week," they write. "He has diabetes and has lost over 20 pounds in the last year alone. His skin is pale from going months without seeing the sun."
Jimmy Lai was born on the mainland and was smuggled into Hong Kong on a fishing boat at the age of 12. He started working in one of Hong Kong's sweatshops, saving his money until he was able to open his own garment business at age 25.
The June 1989 crackdown in Tiananmen Square convinced him to change careers, and he went into publishing. His daily newspaper, Apple Daily, became the largest circulation newspaper in Hong Kong. His fearless coverage of the slow strangulation of Hong Kong's liberties by the Chinese earned him plaudits from across the freedom-loving world and the enmity of Chinese authorities.
The Free Press article written by Lai's friend Robert Sirico tracks Lai's journey to becoming a democracy activist.
It immediately became evident that Jimmy’s passion for freedom, kindled by his horror at the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre, drove him to champion human rights—economic and personal. After Britain handed Hong Kong over to China in 1997, the island’s freedoms began to unravel as the Chinese government assumed more and more authority over Hong Kong’s political and legal systems.
While others sought safety or personal prestige, Lai began a life of outspoken activism. In 2014, he openly marched in the pro-democracy Umbrella Movement with hundreds of thousands of young Hong Kongers, many of them students. After 79 days, police cleared the encampment and arrested Lai, alongside several other demonstration leaders. “I’m prepared to be arrested,” Lai had told reporters on the first day of the protest. “If you persist in resistance, there is always hope. If you give up, there is no hope.”
Lai's children are "cautiously optimistic" that Donald Trump can free their father from prison.
"We’re cautiously optimistic that later this week, when Air Force One lands back in the United States, our father could be on that plane, Sebastian and Claire write in The Free Press. "He could walk down the steps onto American soil—frail and pale, but free.
America is a country that has fought for its freedom, which is why we feel the American people, and its president, deeply understand our father’s story and what he’s fighting for. The U.S. Declaration of Independence states it clearly: These rights to “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness” are “self-evident” and “unalienable.”
U.S Secretary of State Marco Rubio said last week that his “hope for America” is for the country “to continue to be the place where anyone from anywhere can achieve anything. Where you’re not limited by the circumstances of your birth, by the color of your skin, by your ethnicity, but frankly it’s a place where you are able to overcome challenges and achieve your full potential.”
The following day, more than 100 American lawmakers—including nearly two-thirds of the U.S. Senate—signed a letter to Trump urging him to fight for our father’s release. When was the last time that America’s lawmakers from both sides of the aisle agreed on something so forcefully?
"Our father is a hero to many people around the world," the children write. "As his children, we are filled with pride for his bravery. But it also breaks our hearts knowing that he is being tortured for holding beliefs that we all hold, and for his willingness to defend them."
It's Lai's "willingness to defend" those beliefs and suffer for them that makes him a true hero. Xi is very sensitive about U.S. interference in Hong Kong, and the constant criticism of Americans about the promises China made to Great Britain in 1997, when Beijing promised to respect the island's freedom, is a thorn in Xi's side.
It would be a great surprise if Xi released Jimmy Lai. The Chinese have given no signs that they're willing to do that. It's likely that Jimmy Lai will die in prison, but the democracy movement he fought for will remain. Small acts of defiance continue, and China is ever watchful for unsanctioned demonstrations.
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